Retinal prosthetics are targeted for patients with retinal degenerative diseases, such as age-related macular degeneration (AMD), and retinitis pigmentosa (RP), which together affect 2 million people in the US (Friedman et al., 2004; Chader et al., 2009) and 25 million worldwide (Chopdar et al., 2003). In both diseases, it is the input side of the retina that degenerates: cones degenerate in AMD and rods in RP.
What the prosthetics aim to do is bypass the degenerated tissue and stimulate the surviving cells, so that visual information can once again reach the brain. The main targets of the prosthetics are the retinal ganglion cells and the retinal bipolar cells (Loewenstein et al., 2004; Gerding et al., 2007; Winter et al., 2007; Lagali et al., 2008; Chader et al., 2009; Zrenner et al., 2009; Thyagarajan et al., 2010).
Currently, the main strategy for retinal prostheses involves the implantation of electrode arrays into the patient's retina in close proximity to either the bipolar cells or ganglion cells (Gerding et al., 2007; Winter et al., 2007; Chader et al., 2009; Zrenner et al., 2009). The patient is then outfitted with a camera/signal-processing device that takes images and converts them into electronic signals; the signals are then passed to the electrodes, which stimulate the cells (reviewed in (Chader et al., 2009)). While the patients can see some light, the performance of the devices is still quite limited: patients are, for example, able to see spots and edges (Nanduri et al., 2008; Chader et al., 2009), which provide some ability for navigation and gross feature detection, but nothing close to normal vision has been possible. (With respect to navigation, patients can detect light sources, such as doorways, windows and lamps. With respect to detecting shapes, patients can discriminate objects or letters if they span ˜7 degrees of visual angle (Zrenner et al., 2009); this corresponds to about 20/1400 vision (20/200 is the acuity-definition of legal blindness in most places).
Efforts to improve the electrode-based retinal prosthetics have been directed primarily toward increasing their resolution; the focus has been on decreasing the size of the electrodes and increasing their density in the arrays (Chader et al., 2009), as currently, the electrodes range from 50 and 450 microns in diameter (Kelly et al., 2009; Zrenner et al., 2009; Ahuja et al., 2010), which is 10 to 100 times the size of a retinal cell. While there have been some increases in resolution, the current technology does not achieve the resolution of the normal retina, as it is not yet practical to stimulate individual cells with electrodes, and the technical challenge is severe: finer electrodes require more current, which leads to tissue burning (see, for example, the title and agenda for a recent conference on retinal prosthetics: “The Eye and The Chip 2010: 2010 Special Emphasis on Retinal Stimulation Safety for Neuro-Prosthetic Devices”).
As an alternative to stimulating cells with electrodes, optogenetics has been used. The optogenetics approach involves expression of proteins such as channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2) or one of its derivatives in the ganglion cells or bipolar cells. ChR2 is light sensitive; cells expressing it undergo voltage changes upon light activation, which allows the cells to send electrical signals. (Bi et al., 2006; Lagali et al., 2008; Zhang et al., 2009; Tomita et al., 2010) This approach offers the potential for much higher resolution—cells can, in principle, be stimulated individually. While experiments in animals have demonstrated that the potential for high resolution is real, the achievement of near normal or even partially normal vision does not occur as indicated in several recent papers in the field (Bi et al., 2006; Lagali et al., 2008; Zhang et al., 2009; Thyagarajan et al., 2010; Tomita et al., 2010).
Little attention has been paid by either leading approach to driving the stimulators (either the electrodes or a channelrhodopsin) in a way that closely resembles endogenous signaling from retina to brain. Endogenous retinal signaling is complex. When the normal retina receives an image, it carries out a series of operations on it—that is, it extracts information from it and converts the information into a code the brain can read.
Current electrode-based devices have used much simpler signal processing than the retina, e.g., they just convert light intensity at each point in the image into pulse rate with linear scaling (Loewenstein et al., 2004; Fried et al., 2006; Kibbel et al., 2009; Ahuja et al., 2010). Because of this, the retinal output generated by these devices is very different from normal retinal output; the brain is expecting signals in one code and is getting them in another.
Current optogenetic approaches are similarly limited. Efforts to improve them have focused largely on developing the properties of channelrhodopsin (e.g., increasing its sensitivity to light and altering its kinetics) and have not devoted significant effort to mimicking endogenous retinal signal processing (Bi et al., 2006; Lagali et al., 2008; Zhang et al., 2009; Thyagarajan et al., 2010; Tomita et al., 2010).
Thus, there exists a need to develop a retinal prosthesis that converts visual input into normal retinal output that the brain can readily interpret. The retinal prosthesis also needs to provide high resolution signaling, ideally targeting individual retinal cells such as retinal ganglion cells. The present invention sets forth such a prosthesis; it combines an encoding step that produces normal or near-normal retinal output together with high resolution transducer to provide normal or near normal vision to the blind.